President Donald Trump reportedly demanded that a series of ads promoting his presidency be paid for with taxpayer money instead of his own massive political war chest. An understandable response after a cumulative five years and nine months of Trump’s narcissistic behavior in office would be a weary “of course he did.” But the $20 million in funding set aside to bring MAGA propaganda to millions of American households should not be treated as just another example Trumpian self-aggrandizement, especially given how many supposed adults in the room signed off on what seems to be blatant public corruption.
The Wall Street Journal first reported last week that the ads, each of which discloses that it was “paid for by the U.S. government,” were funded out of the Department of Homeland Security. The New York Times reported Saturday that the president “personally instructed” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought to “come up with the money” for the ads “from within the government.”
The $20 million in funding set aside to bring MAGA propaganda to millions of American households should not be treated as just another example Trumpian self-aggrandizement.
According to the Times, Vought then shifted the money to U.S. Customs and Border Protection under “a budget category called One Big Beautiful Bill Commemorative Events.” Federal contracting records showed that, a day later, a Maryland-based firm called LMD was hired to produce the ads. CNN reports that LMD has a total of 12 ads in the hopper, though only three had aired as of Monday, while the Times also reported that another firm, LMO, purchased the airtime used to disseminate them.
As I previously explained, the ads are not actually “public service announcements” as the White House claims, and they run afoul of legal limits preventing any federal funding from being spent on “publicity or propaganda purposes” within the U.S. that Congress hasn’t authorized. Even some congressional Republicans were left uncomfortable by the government-funded ads.
Trump defended the ads last Wednesday and said if they weren’t allowed, “I’ll gladly pay the money, but these are ads for the country.” As the backlash increased, he posted Monday on Truth Social that he has “decided to do the Patriotic Ads and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.” It’s unclear whether this means he will pay back the federal government for the money it has already spent or intends to pick up the cost of airing the ads still in the queue. Neither exonerates him from having misused government funds in the first place.
Trump’s initial hoarding instinct tracked with his history of refusing to pay for things out of his own pocket if possible. Spending $20 million of his own money on these propaganda ads would be $20 million less than Trump would have to gird his own influence and legacy in the future. Tapping government funds instead feels like the logical next step after first spending donor money on his own lawyers and then initially hoarding the $400 million in donations his MAGA Inc. super PAC had amassed.
Vought signing off on Trump’s demand is likewise unsurprising given his general disdain for following Congress’ instructions on how federal money can be spent. More interesting is that both the White House counsel and OMB’s counsel reportedly greenlit the plan as being legal. The Times did not provide the specific reasoning behind this questionable conclusion, which runs up against the General Accountability Office’s past guidance.
Designating the money used for the ads under the umbrella of celebrating last year’s GOP-only funding bill does provide a semiplausible explanation, as the One Big Beautiful Bill funded many of Trump’s biggest policies and priorities. But a quick look at two lawyers who made the call provides much more context.
As I wrote last month, Will Scharf, who only recently became the White House’s top lawyer, had already been clocked as a likely rubber stamp for his boss. His counterpart at OMB, Mark Paoletta, is an even easier read. Paoletta has worked with Vought for years now, having also served as counsel during the first Trump administration, and helped execute the scheme to withhold military aid from Ukraine that led to Trump’s first impeachment. The GAO ruled that withholding those funds was ultimately illegal, as was his idea to use recreation fees to keep national parks open during a federal shutdown.
The Washington Post in 2020 described Paoletta’s role in the Ukraine affair as “just one example of how he has enabled the White House to stretch the legal limits of the executive branch — forcefully pushing forward the administration’s agenda but sometimes incurring a severe backlash in the process.” Among other examples were piling restrictions on federal disaster assistance to Puerto Rico, providing legal justification for Trump transferring Pentagon funding to build his border wall with Mexico. More recently, Politico said Paoletta has “become known as the lawyer willing to test limits rather than avoid them — sometimes going further than some in the White House or Justice Department prefer.”
Siphoning off funds to pay for those ads is a case of defrauding the government at best, outright theft at worst.
It seems that here we find our most likely answer to the Times’ assertion that it “was not clear why taxpayer funds, and not money from [Trump’s] super PAC, were used for the spots.” The money was funneled away from whatever legitimate purpose it held simply because Trump wanted it to be spent on him instead. Despite the clear problems with his order, nobody around him thought to say “no.”
Whether these ads spotlighting Trump have a positive influence on the midterm electorate at a time when his approval rating is further underwater than Atlantis feels beside the point. These ads should be taken off the air immediately for violating the anti-propaganda laws Congress has passed, regardless of whether Trump retroactively foots the bill. Moreover, everyone around him who signed off on this scheme should rightly be the target of an investigation for willfully breaking those laws.
Siphoning off funds to pay for those ads is a case of defrauding the government at best, outright theft at worst. There is no world in which Trump is allowed to spend taxpayer money to bolster his own sense of accomplishment, particularly when he could have easily done so legally from his own pockets from the beginning.
The post Why Trump thinks he can get away with his taxpayer-funded self-promo appeared first on MS NOW.
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